The Fed has been stealing from our seniors

Contrary to the belief of some, scripture does not say that “money is the root of all evil.”

The actual quote states that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Down in Washington D.C. where elected officials are consumed with the love of power and money, they are willing to devalue the monetary system to support their addiction. The individuals paying the price for this behavior are our senior citizens on fixed incomes.

Unfortunately for the United States, our monetary system has lost any trace of honesty. No one can accurately predict what the dollar will be worth next year because no one can know how many new dollars will be printed in the next series of bailouts. Who does this hurt? Again, it is our seniors.

The uncertainty continues because the bailouts continue. The subsidized mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been in the news as they report huge losses (and award themselves huge executive bonuses).

The Congressional Budget Office said in July that the Freddie and Fannie bailouts will end up costing the taxpayer about $350 billion. However, the Federal Reserve handed out around $16 trillion in total bailout loans during the last crisis. Banks such as the Union Bank of Switzerland (recipient of $153 billion) are the biggest offenders, but General Motors and other industrial companies also received tens of billions of dollars.

If the information published by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is correct, and this $16 trillion is in addition to the published debt of $15 trillion, we are $31 trillion in debt and just crossed over the point of $100,000 in debt per person for all 308 million American residents documented in the 2010 census.

The resources that the bailed-out companies consume did not come out of thin air. They come out of the value of money; they are transfers via inflation from working people, from the retired through devaluation of their nest eggs and from small businesses who depend on honest cash flow to operate. Where did this money go? To those with political power and influence.

The U.S. dollar now buys less than a nickel did in 1913. Ron Paul pointed out not long ago that gasoline prices haven’t gone up. A silver dime buys more gasoline than it did 40 years ago. It is the dollar that has depreciated.

Whom does this perpetual inflation affect the most? It is our seniors, those who have been here for our country when we needed them most. Seniors who invested in Social Security, who did so on the promise of a retirement system that would take care of them after they stopped working.

In 2012, seniors living on Social Security will get a 3.6 percent increase, the first bump in 2 years. However, many food items as well as gasoline are up well over 25 percent in that same time period. The inflation that subsidizes Goldman Sachs and other financial interests is simply theft from senior citizens.

A free market cannot exist without honest money. We have lost control of our monetary system. The Federal Reserve has become a rogue state; it has unilaterally increased the U.S. monetary base from $800 billion to nearly $2.7 trillion in less than three years.

The root of monetary evil is the Federal Reserve. Presidential candidate Ron Paul proposes that we end the secrecy of the Federal Reserve by starting with a full audit and then continuing to full openness and transparency. And, of course, he would end all bailouts for the politically connected. This would restore the dollar’s reliability as a store of value, and end the threat of imminent monetary collapse.

We can restore America to prosperity. We can return honesty and value to our monetary system and keep the promises we made to this country’s senior citizens.

Please choose your presidential candidate carefully; the Federal Reserve seems to have its hooks in several of them.